The Trials of Nellie Belle

by Sydney Avey

  The door slammed shut, and a Chihuahua scuttled into view. Spotting a stranger in the kitchen, Scochie squatted on her haunches and peed. Leone dropped down to sit on her ankles and held out the back of her hand. The little dog trembled, sniffed the air, and inched forward on dancing feet. Leone crooned, and the dog swooned, rolling onto her back. Leone massaged the dog’s tummy with gentle fingertips, causing the dog’s eyes to roll back in her head and her leg to tic like the second hand on a clock when it gets stuck.

  Opal handed Leone a paper towel to wipe up the mess the dog had made.

  “Dogs like me.” Leone blotted the puddle with the towel. Scochie jumped to her feet and shook her hindquarters in appreciation. “I don’t know anything about kids. It was probably stupid of me to agree to take her.”

  “Jane asked you to take her?” Opal unwrapped the cold cuts and began to spread mayonnaise on slices of bread.

  “The other kid is sick. This one is better off here, don’t you think?”

  “I love having her here.”

  Leone stood and watched Christine from the window. The girl sat on a swing seat, knees pressed together, head bent over a Betty and Veronica comic, pulling her fingers through her ponytail. “That’s good,” Leone said. “We’ll have a nice visit. You can watch her tonight, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the city. Can I borrow your car?”

  “I’d really rather you didn’t. Opal set a plate of sandwiches on the table and poured milk into three glasses. “Why didn’t you drive your car up from the coast?”

  Leone pulled in her chin and silently mouthed, milk Then she scowled. “My car is on the fritz. What is this, the third degree? Never mind. I can call a friend.”

  The screen door squealed again. “Is lunch ready yet? I’m hungry.” Christine stayed out of sight.

  “Come on in,” Opal said. “Lunch is on the table.”

  So motherly. Without alcohol to dull annoyance, Leone fought the demon of discontent. The girl came in and sat down, pulling one leg up underneath her. She set about pulling her sandwich apart to inspect the cheese. Leone left her sandwich untouched. She stared at Christine, her mind clicking like a slide projector. An old slide dropped into view, her teenage self seated at the table with her grandmother, mother, and Jane. She searched the image for motherliness.

  Sit up straight. Don’t play with your food. Nellie’s voice.

  You never play with me. Jane’s voice.

  Where was her mother’s voice? She struggled to hear it. Leone examined the faces that floated before her; a matriarch’s displeasure, a mite’s dissatisfaction, and between them, a mother’s patient forbearance.

  A soft feather of sound brushed past her ear. It took her back to her beach-combing childhood when she sought protection from buffeting winds by leaning against her mother’s body. Not a soft body to pillow into, it was more like a strong gate you could swing on, a gate that never unhinged under your weight, never locked you out. But when her sister was born, she saw that the love that drew her in and spoke words of comfort was indiscriminate. Not special, not just for her, it was offered to all. She shut down her mental projector, picked up her plate and her milk glass, and took them to the sink.

  “I’m sorry; I can’t eat this.” The plate clattered in the sink. Milk poured down the drain.

  Opal looked up from where she sat next to Christine. “Can I fix you something else?”

  “No, no. I’m just not hungry. I’m going outside for a smoke.” Leone forced a smile. “When I come back in, let’s play a game of canasta, shall we?” She patted Christine’s head, and as she passed by, Opal reached for Leone’s hand.

  It had been years since she had allowed a touch from her mother. Inwardly, she recoiled, but she let Opal squeeze her hand. The warm flesh of her mother’s palm was soft as butter, but the strength in the fingers that closed around hers was surprisingly powerful. The grasp was firm, but not bruising; quick, but not abrupt. Opal dropped Leone’s hand before she could pull away.

  R

  They played canasta at the kitchen table in this house that held no history for Leone. Being an uneven number of people, they drew and discarded and melded their cards individually. Christine had an irritating way of snickering when she was ahead. Anything but pokerfaced, she would knit her eyebrows together and purse her lips for long minutes before she laid down her cards and slapped the table with glee. As Opal gathered the cards to deal another round, Christine turned to Leone.

  “Nana told me you used to be a dancer and a writer. Did you ever write a book?”

  “That was a long time ago.” Leone scraped her chair back from the table, stood up, and left the kitchen. In the bathroom, she leaned her head against the thin wall and listened to the muffled conversation taking place at the stove on the other side of the wall but inches from the toilet. A spoon clattered against an aluminum pan. Her mother was making hot chocolate. Christine must be standing at her elbow. A nonstop talker, that one. All those questions followed by a litany of noncommittal answers. “I don’t know. I really can’t say. You need to ask Leone about that.”

  When Leone returned to the kitchen, three cups of steamy hot chocolate sat on the table. While Opal sorted the cards for a new game, Christine pulled a stack of hard chocolate chip cookies out of a blue cellophane package and piled them on a plate like poker chips. Leone put a magazine she had tucked under her arm down in front of Christine, opened it, and tapped her finger on the masthead.

  “This is the first issue of a magazine I helped bring out, Dune Forum.”

  Opal dealt the cards.

  “Look here.” Leone flipped over to the credits and pointed to her biographical note.

  As Christine read, her eyes widened, then narrowed. “This was a long time ago. Did you really write a book?”

  “I really did, but it was never published.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Shall we start this round?” Opal scooted the card deck into view.

  “Nothing a girl your age would understand.”

  Christine scrolled her finger down the table of contents and found Leone’s name. Then she leafed through the magazine and found her aunt’s poem, Symphony of Water. She read it out loud.

  Opal gathered up the cards, put them away, and went to feed the dog.

  “I don’t understand this poem, Aunt Leone.”

  Leone shrugged.

  Christine re-read a few lines out loud.

  Knowledge breaks.

  We gather the things that we are.

  And we are tears, and we are dew,

  And we are rain, and we are sweat.

  We are every running river,

  We are every soaring sea.

  We belong, we belong …

  “I get it! It’s about not understanding. Like trying to understand who we are and where we come from, and why stuff happens to us.”

  Did I write those words? Leone stared out the window. Her eyes rested on a rose bush in full bloom. Something she couldn’t see was making a commotion under the bush, causing the branches to shake and the blowsy yellow roses to drop their petals.

  Christine babbled on. “In the poem, you ask the mother for comfort. You don’t ask the father for anything. Why not?”

  “What? Are they teaching psychoanalysis in grammar school?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Never mind.”

  “We study poetry.” Christine lost her smile. “I am good at it.” Her eyes hardened briefly, in the way that a friendly dog who receives an unexpected slap turns feral and then catches itself before it snaps.

  In retort, Leone recited another few lines from her poem.

  “‘It is the thing between. An asking and an answer. It is the shore …” Some of us prefer to sit on the shore, Christine. We don’t ask, and we have no answers.

  “You never ask God for answers?” Christine seemed at the ready to supply the answers, but Leone stopped her.

  “I
have never asked God for anything, and He has kindly obliged me.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Opal spoke with quiet, heartfelt finality.

  Leone’s throat tightened. She supposed her words were sacrilege. She felt like a cattle rustler in a Western film, standing on the scaffold with a rope around her neck. Did she have any last words on the subject?

  “I am fairly certain I have never asked God for help unless you count the times I swore at Jesus and asked Him to get Sister Isabel off my back. But you are right. I can’t accuse Him of not trying to get my attention. He has tried. Several times. I guess I just don’t have it in me to respond.”

  Something moved in the periphery of her vision. Foe or friend? Was it creeping toward her or darting away? Time to leave, now, before the floor fell away under her feet.

  Leone reached over and pulled the magazine out from underneath the girl’s scrutiny, but not roughly. She shoved it down into the overstuffed green canvas bag that stood on the floor. “I have to go change now.” She looked at her watch, then held out her arm. “Look at the time, would you. My friend is picking me up in just a few minutes.”

  “So I guess we aren’t going shopping.” Christine’s voice was steady, her words less a question than a statement of fact.

  Opal dropped a hand down on the girl’s shoulder. “It’s getting late. We’ll go tomorrow. You have time to go outside before dinner if you like.”

  “Yes, tomorrow.” Leone shooed Christine away from the table. The girl walked to the back door and pulled open the screen. Her feet tripped slowly down the stairs. Before long, the rusty chain on the swing set began its complaint.

  Leone hauled her canvas bag to the bedroom and reappeared moments later wearing high-waisted dungarees cuffed at the ankle and a green buffalo-plaid shirt, worn thin. She stood by the living room window, looking out to the street. “Hey.” Her raised voice echoed. “How come you don’t have any furniture in here?”

  Opal came out of the kitchen and stood in the center of the room, her feet falling naturally into third position. Unaware of the habit, Leone was sure, her mother checked her posture in the mirror and straightened her shoulders.

  Leone looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time; the mirrored wall, the bare floor, the ballet barre. Her eyes froze. She pressed her lips together, biting them between her teeth until the inside of her lower lip felt raw.

  “I’m still working, Leone. We talked about this. This room is my dance studio. I have students during the week.”

  “That’s right. You did say that. Still teaching the neighbor kids proper posture and social grace?”

  “Dance steps go in and out of fashion, but people always have the need to present themselves well to others. After what we have all been through, this world could use a little grace, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose it could, but what do I know about grace? Once I danced in Hollywood and read my poetry in North Beach bars. Now I’m a dog groomer. I didn’t tell that to Christine, but Jane knows. I’m sure she’ll tell Christine first chance she gets.”

  Opal reached a hand out to touch Leone, but this time, Leone flinched and pulled back. Opal let her hand fall in a way as natural to her as closing a dance movement. Leone gave her mother a hard look, but somewhere, in the recesses of her mind, the beauty of the music that sustained her mother registered. The agony of knowing that beauty was so close and so unattainable to her made Leone desperate for a drink.

  Opal spoke quietly. “It’s an honorable profession, caring for animals. We’ve always loved dogs. Jane can’t handle them now, but both you girls loved dogs.”

  “Jane can barely handle her girls.”

  Opal’s dark eyes shimmered. “I do what I can to help her. Christine spends a lot of time here with me. It’s good for both of us.”

  Leone turned her face away.

  “I know you had dreams that didn’t come true.” Opal ignored the sound of a car engine that slowed to an idle by the mailbox. “But working with something you love, the way you do? That is no small accomplishment.”

  The car turned and pulled up in the driveway.

  “Don’t wait up. I’ll be late.”

  “The door will be unlocked.”

  35 - Passing Torches

  35

  Passing Torches

  Christine propped herself against a pillow on her twin bed in the back bedroom. She finished a chapter in her library book and let it fall shut. Turning her head toward the other bed, she studied Leone’s slouchy canvas bag that spilled out reading material, notebooks, and odd-looking clothes.

  Why did Leone look so different? What did Nana mean when she said that Leone had lived a hard life? Dancing in Hollywood, living and writing at the beach, it all sounded fun, but Leone’s eyes guarded secrets. Her eyes were dark, like Nana’s, but the sadness was different.

  Nana’s eyes were like cups of warm cocoa. You knew sadness lay in lumps at the bottom, but as you drank, the lumps dissolved and added flavor. Was sadness like that? She thought about the sweet whipped cream Nana always spooned over her cocoa. The cream floated on top and melted slowly into the warm drink. It took the bitterness away.

  Christine had heard about her grandmother’s sorrow: two dead husbands, a dead baby, but there was some other kind of sadness. Even though Nana never complained, she must be sad that both her daughters were so … angry.

  A sudden thump jolted her from her thoughts. Sadie, the solidly built, black and white bobtail cat came out from underneath the bed and jumped up to settle at Christine’s feet. Opal peeked her head in.

  “Time to tuck you in and say your prayers?”

  Christine yawned and set her library book aside on the night table.

  “Is that for school?” Nana was always interested in her studies.

  “No. I’m reading Oliver Twist for myself, but I can’t keep my eyes open.”

  Opal sat down on the bed next to her granddaughter. Sadie opened one green eye, stretched out her front legs and showed her claws, and then tucked her paws under her chest. She rested her chin on Christine’s outstretched legs and went back to sleep.

  “Do you want me to review your Sunday school lesson with you?”

  “Sure.” Christine reached for the paper tucked inside the Bible that lay in the stack of books on the nightstand by her bed. Her library books traveled back and forth between her house and Nana’s house, but her Bible and her comic books were treasures she kept here.

  Opal glanced at the paper. “You haven’t done much with this.”

  “I read it. I just haven’t filled it out yet.” Christine lay back on her pillow while Opal read through the lesson.

  “Do you know what the root of evil is?” Opal asked her.

  “I know that one. It’s money.”

  “Is that the answer? I’m not sure that’s true.” Opal reached out and lifted up the tiny gold cross Christine wore around her neck. She worked it back and forth on its chain, then gently laid the cross back down on the child’s chest, just above her heart.

  “I think the root of evil is bitterness. If you have any of that in your heart, confess it when you say the Our Father. Are you ready to say your prayers?”

  Christine nodded, but she wasn’t quite ready. “What is bitterness?”

  Opal thought a moment. “It is the sin of Cain.”

  “He’s the one who killed his brother. So, wouldn’t murder be the sin of Cain?”

  “Murder was the result. Cain’s sin was disappointing God and refusing to make amends. Instead, he let anger grow in his heart. That is bitterness.”

  “Oh.” Christine closed her eyes and started to say the prayer her grandmother had helped her memorize. Before she made it to “Thy will be done,” she was asleep.

  R

  In the early morning hours, the springs on the twin bed next to Christine’s squeaked and groaned. Or it might have been a low, cursing moan that woke Christine, or the thud as the green canvas bag rolled off the bed, hi
t the floor, and spilled its contents. Christine opened her eyes a slit and peered into the dark. The moon dropped just enough light through the window for her to make out the shape of her aunt wrapped in the coverlet that lay on the bed. A soft breeze from the open window carried a sour smell past her nose. She rolled over, buried her nose in her pillow, and went back to sleep.

  A few hours later, the smell of coffee and toast woke Christine. She rubbed the sandy sleep from her eyes and sat up. Underneath her thin pajama top, the one with pink French poodle and black Eiffel Tower patterns, she hunched her shoulders to keep warm. Rocking back and forth to wake herself up, she felt pressure in her bladder. It was too soon to put bare foot to cold floor, so she set her eyes on the face of Jesus printed on a prayer card stuck to the dresser mirror.

  The card had a glow-in-the-dark cross she had wanted since she first spotted it in the gold offering plate that held Bible-themed prizes. Children who recited Bible verses from memory during children’s church received awards. She liked the saying too: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer. She hated to memorize, but this verse had a nice rhythm. It was easy to learn.

  The pressure became urgent. Christine threw off her covers and looked over to the other bed. It was made up. The neatly packed green canvas bag sat upright at the end of the bed. Christine hung her feet over the side of her bed and dangled them. Slowly she lowered one foot to the floor, then the other. She ran on tiptoes down the hall to the bathroom.

  “Christine, your toast is ready. Your oatmeal will be done in a minute.” Opal’s voice was as clear through the wall as if she had been standing right beside the toilet. Christine knocked on the wall in response. While she sat, she leaned over and put her ear to the wall. A metal spoon circling inside an aluminum pot kept rhythm with the measured tones of conversation.

  “I’ve ordered a taxi,” she heard Leone say. “It should be here in an hour.”

  The stirring stopped. “But …”

  “But listen, can you do me a favor? Take Christine shopping today. Buy her a dress. Tell Jane I bought the dress. I will send you the money for it.”